Happy Engineers Week

[MrGneissGuy]

It's halfway over already, but I just heard on the radio this morning that it's Engineers week. This forum is full of engineers, future engineers, and pseudo engineers, so I figured I would wish you all a happy engineers week.

In case you aren't sure if you qualify, I found a simple one question test...

ENGINEER IDENTIFICATION TEST;
You walk into a room and notice that a picture is hanging crooked.
You...

A. Straighten it.
B. Ignore it.
C. Buy a CAD system and spend the next six months designing a solar-powered, self-adjusting picture frame while often stating aloud your belief that the inventor of the nail was a total moron.



If you answer "C", you are an engineer, but partial credit can be given to anybody who answered "It depends" or simply blames the whole stupid thing on "Marketing."

[mjennings]

Thanks. As my contribution to the Engineers week games I provide the traditional young engineers game of random unit conversions! Convert the following common engineering (more aero astro orientated cause I'm an AE) values from the Furlong Firkin Fortnight System into either SI or Engineering Units (Imperial, British, SAE, non metric, what the US still uses or what ever your preferred name for the feet pound second system is). And name the significance of the value. Show your work.

1.804x10^12 furlongs/fortnight
3.425x10^-6 frikin fortnight^2/furlongs^4
1.469x10^23 firikin
7.138x10^10 furlongs/fortnight^2
6.726x10^7 furlongs/fortnight

Hopefully I converted the the questions right

I'll post answers later in the week

[dave carver]

"Oh, My, God,...We're in the hands of engineers!!"

Who said it and what movie? (the only on topic movie quote I have )

[tbzep]

"Oh, My, God,...We're in the hands of engineers!!"

Who said it and what movie? (the only on topic movie quote I have )

Jurassic Park, but IIRC it is, "God help us. We're in the hands of engineers!"

[UPscaler]

Hopeful future Aerospace Engineer here!



Braden

[dave carver]

Jurassic Park, but IIRC it is, "God help us. We're in the hands of engineers!"

Bah, been too many years

[aerostadt]

It's time to shoot the engineers and press on.

[nh4clo4]

...and of course the classic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOtoujYOWw0

[bobkrech]

Thanks. As my contribution to the Engineers week games I provide the traditional young engineers game of random unit conversions! Convert the following common engineering (more aero astro orientated cause I'm an AE) values from the Furlong Firkin Fortnight System into either SI or Engineering Units (Imperial, British, SAE, non metric, what the US still uses or what ever your preferred name for the feet pound second system is). And name the significance of the value. Show your work.

1.804x10^12 furlongs/fortnight
3.425x10^-6 frikin fortnight^2/furlongs^4
1.469x10^23 firikin
7.138x10^10 furlongs/fortnight^2
6.726x10^7 furlongs/fortnight

Hopefully I converted the the questions right

I'll post answers later in the week

I'll be just as cryptic.

ICU? - 1.804 terafurlong/fortnight.
firkin - can have it either way, wait or measure?
I'm falling and I can't get up. - 71.38 gigafurlong/fortnight^2
Need to get away? - 67.26 megafurlong/fortnight

Bob

[MrGneissGuy]

Thanks. As my contribution to the Engineers week games I provide the traditional young engineers game of random unit conversions! Convert the following common engineering (more aero astro orientated cause I'm an AE) values from the Furlong Firkin Fortnight System into either SI or Engineering Units (Imperial, British, SAE, non metric, what the US still uses or what ever your preferred name for the feet pound second system is). And name the significance of the value. Show your work.

1.804x10^12 furlongs/fortnight
3.425x10^-6 frikin fortnight^2/furlongs^4
1.469x10^23 firikin
7.138x10^10 furlongs/fortnight^2
6.726x10^7 furlongs/fortnight

Hopefully I converted the the questions right

I'll post answers later in the week

All I know is that it's been many a fortnight since I put any money on a firkin horse that was within two furlongs of even showing....

[bradycros]

Thanks. As my contribution to the Engineers week games I provide the traditional young engineers game of random unit conversions! Convert the following common engineering (more aero astro orientated cause I'm an AE) values from the Furlong Firkin Fortnight System into either SI or Engineering Units (Imperial, British, SAE, non metric, what the US still uses or what ever your preferred name for the feet pound second system is). And name the significance of the value. Show your work.

1.804x10^12 furlongs/fortnight
3.425x10^-6 frikin fortnight^2/furlongs^4
1.469x10^23 firikin
7.138x10^10 furlongs/fortnight^2
6.726x10^7 furlongs/fortnight

Hopefully I converted the the questions right

I'll post answers later in the week

firkin (fir) [1]

a traditional unit of volume equal to 1/4 barrel or 1/2 kilderkin. Since barrels are of various sizes, the capacity of a firkin varies. Based on the standard U.S. barrel of 31.5 gallons, a firkin would equal 7.875 gallons, 1.05 cubic feet, or about 29.81 liters. Traditional British barrels and firkins are larger; in the Imperial system a firkin holds 1.445 cubic feet or 40.91 liters. The unit is of Dutch origin, and its name is based on the Dutch word vier for four.


kilderkin

an old British unit of volume equal to 1/2 barrel or 2 firkins. Based on the current British barrel, this would be 18 (Imperial) gallons, which is about 2.9 cubic feet or 78 liters. Older kilderkins were generally in the range of 16-18 gallons. The word comes from a Dutch word for a small cask.



firkin (fir) [2]

a traditional unit of weight for butter and soap, equal to 4 stone or 56 pounds (about 25.40 kilograms).



fortnight

a traditional English unit of time equal to 2 weeks or 14 days. The word, a contraction of "fourteen nights," has been used since at least the 1100s.



furlong (fur)

a traditional unit of distance. Long before the Norman Conquest in 1066, Saxon farmers in England were measuring distance in rods and furlongs and areas in acres. The word "furlong", from the Old English fuhrlang, means "the length of a furrow"; it represents the distance a team of oxen could plow without needing a rest. A furlong equals 40 rods [1], which is exactly 10 chains, 220 yards, 660 feet, or 1/8 mile. One furlong is exactly 201.168 meters, so a 200-meter dash covers a distance very close to a furlong. The length of horse races is often stated in furlongs.

[mjennings]

very well these are your factors

Unit Dimension SI unit Imperial unit
furlong length 201.168 m 220 yards
firkin mass 40.8233133 kg 90 lb[6]
fortnight time 1,209,600 s 14 days

source the always correct and never questionable
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furlong..._per_fortnight

[bobkrech]

1 firkin = 40.9148269 liters google calculator

A firkin is an old English unit of volume. The name is derived from the Middle Dutch word vierdekijn, which means fourth, i.e. a quarter of a full-size barrel.
For beer and ale a firkin is equal to nine imperial gallons, seventy-two pints, or a quarter of a barrel (40.91481 litres). Casks in this size (themselves called firkins) are the most common container for cask ale. A firkin is equal to half a kilderkin.
For wine the firkin had a larger size, namely a third of a tun. A tun being 210 gallons in the UK and 252 fluid gallons in the US, thus a wine firkin is about 318 l (318.226 or 317.975). It is also called tertian or, preferably, puncheon (in the US also shortened to pon).
Butter and soap used to be sold by the firkin, too. In these cases it was a measure of weight, instead of volume: e.g., 56 lb (25.4 kg) and 64 lb (29.0 kg) respectively.
The term firkin is currently used to refer to antique wooden buckets, usually with wood handle and lid, about 10 inches (250 mm) high and 10 inches in diameter (about 10l or 2-3 dry gallons in capacity), formerly used to store sugar and other items. Wikipedia

http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/siderive.html lists the common SI units. Most fundamental constants are known to better than 0.01% and often orders of magnitude better. http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Constants/index.html The firkin on the other hand is ambigious as it is has an uncertainty of 4000% for volume and almost that range in mass.

A poor choice of a fundamental constant.

Bob

[mjennings]

The only real use for the FFF unit system is as an example to discuss the pros and cons of various unit systems and so there are other options than the standard two systems for conversion practice. I could have went biblical and did rods and shekels but decided not to.

[bradycros]

The only real use for the FFF unit system is as an example to discuss the pros and cons of various unit systems and so there are other options than the standard two systems for conversion practice. I could have went biblical and did rods and shekels but decided not to.

rod (rd) [1]

a traditional unit of distance equal to 5.5 yards (16 feet 6 inches or exactly 5.0292 meters). The rod and the furlong were the basic distance units used by the Anglo-Saxon residents of England before the Norman conquest of 1066. The Saxons generally called this unit the gyrd, a word which comes down to us as the name of a different unit, the yard. "Rod" is another Saxon word which meant just what it means today: a straight stick. The Normans preferred to call the gyrd a pole or a perch (a word of French origin, meaning a pole; see perche). The length of the rod was well established at least as early as the eighth century. It may have originated as the length of an ox-goad, a pole used to control a team of 8 oxen (4 yokes). Scholars are not sure how the rod was related to shorter units. It may have been considered equal to 20 "natural" feet (actual foot lengths; see foot), or it may have been measured "by hand" as 30 shaftments. In any case, when the modern foot became established in the twelfth century, the royal government did not want to change the length of the rod, since that length was the basis of land measurement, land records, and taxes. Therefore the rod was redefined to equal 16.5 feet, because with reasonable precision that happened to be its length in terms of the new foot. This length was called the "king's perch" at least as early as the time of King Richard the Lionheart (1198). Although rods and perches of other lengths were used locally in Britain, the king's perch eventually prevailed. The relationship between the rod and the other English distance units was confirmed again by the Parliamentary statute of 1592, which defined the statute mile to be either 320 rods or 1760 yards, thus forcing the rod to equal exactly 5.5 yards or 16.5 feet.



rod (rd) [2]

a unit of area equal to one square rod [1]. A rod of area covers exactly 272.25 square feet or about 25.292 85 square meters. There are 40 rods in a rood and 160 rods in an acre.


shekel or sheqel

an ancient Hebrew unit of weight (and also a coin having that weight). The shekel was the Hebrew version of a Babylonian unit used throughout the Middle East. Accounts differ on its size. A frequently quoted equivalent is 1/60 mina, which is equal to about 8.3 grams or 0.29 ounce (avoirdupois); other sources quote a value of 11.3 grams or 0.40 ounce or various other values in the range 7-14 grams (0.25-0.5 ounce).

[SCE to AUX]

http://www.fortunecity.com/lavendar/...224/metric.wav

[bobkrech]

The only real use for the FFF unit system is as an example to discuss the pros and cons of various unit systems and so there are other options than the standard two systems for conversion practice. I could have went biblical and did rods and shekels but decided not to.

Mike

We purchased the first commercial multi-joule e-beam pumped excimer laser from Maxwell Laboratories circa 1980, and it was a dog. Before we modified the firing circuit, it had a 25% probability of erecting the 350 KV Marx bank and not crowbaring it off after the laser pulse which resulted in a destroyed laser cavity. Even after that was fixed, the factory $5,000 laser mirrors failed after 3 - 5 laser pulses leading us to describe the miserable laser output in photons per fortnight...

I've had c = 1.8 terafurlongs/fortnight written on the top right corner of my office white board for many years so I figured out most of your post in a few microfortnights ...

Bob

[Atlantis]

AE in training here.

[mjennings]

Mike

We purchased the first commercial multi-joule e-beam pumped excimer laser from Maxwell Laboratories circa 1980, and it was a dog. Before we modified the firing circuit, it had a 25% probability of erecting the 350 KV Marx bank and not crowbaring it off after the laser pulse which resulted in a destroyed laser cavity. Even after that was fixed, the factory $5,000 laser mirrors failed after 3 - 5 laser pulses leading us to describe the miserable laser output in photons per fortnight...

I've had c = 1.8 terafurlongs/fortnight written on the top right corner of my office white board for many years so I figured out most of your post in a few microfortnights ...

Bob

Bob, that is awesome